The death penalty in CA (and ultimately elsewhere)

Sir Tokyo Sexwale · March 2, 2006

Looks like lethal injection could be going for a burton. As the US already doesn't like old sparky, and is reluctant to use the firing squad or hanging, what alternatives will they be left with?

I say we should bring back burning; especially if we can accuse them of being witches

economist

CALIFORNIA has recently endured two extended execution dramas?over whether to spare Stanley ?Tookie? Williams, a repentant gang leader, and Clarence Ray Allen, a septuagenarian murderer. With Michael Morales, the question is not whether to execute him?California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied clemency?but how to do it. Because this question remains unresolved, the confessed murderer remains alive in San Quentin prison.

Mr Morales, who in 1981 strangled, bludgeoned, stabbed and raped his cousin's 17-year-old girlfriend, was due to die by lethal injection at one minute past midnight on February 22nd. However, the execution was halted in the nick of time when two anaesthesiologists belatedly refused to oversee the procedure. A second appointment in the death chamber, scheduled for 7.30pm on the same day, was postponed indefinitely when the prison authorities could find no medically qualified person to assist.

The need for medical personnel to be inside the chamber?rather than watching from outside merely to certify death?follows rulings by a federal district court judge, Jeremy Fogel, that could have implications far beyond California. Bearing in mind the constitution's ban on ?cruel and unusual punishment?, Judge Fogel decided that California's three-stage procedure?a sedative of sodium thiopental, then a paralysing drug such as pancuronium bromide and finally a heart-stopping injection of potassium chloride?might hide rather than eliminate a prisoner's pain. Hence the instruction that doctors should be present.

That two anaesthesiologists could be found in the first place raised eyebrows in the medical community. But the two who accepted the job ducked out, saying that the possibility of having to intervene were Mr Morales to wake up or be in pain ?would clearly be medically unethical?.

Hence Judge Fogel's second ruling: the state could go ahead with the execution, with a licensed medical professional administering a single, lethally large dose of the sedative. Since the state could not find a qualified person in time, Mr Morales returned to his cell. The warrant for his execution has now expired, and because the judge who originally sentenced him now thinks he should be spared, the stay of execution could be permanent.

In the meantime, Judge Fogel has said that he will hold a hearing on the injection procedure in May. Since lethal injection is used in 37 of the 38 states that practise capital punishment, that could make for some far-reaching testimony. Stories abound of prisoners taking time to die, of suffering convulsions and of being in pain; indeed Judge Fogel referred to Williams's drawn-out execution as San Quentin in December. In the past two weeks courts in Florida, Missouri and Maryland have all issued stays of execution in cases challenging injection as a procedur

Gilps · March 2, 2006

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